Book Talk with Dr. Kate Masur: Freedom was in Sight!

This new and engaging graphic history of Reconstruction emphasizes the impact of slavery’s abolition and explores how Black Americans sought to build their lives in freedom. Using text and color illustrations, the book shows how the Civil War loosened enslavers’ grip on power, enslaved people bravely sought freedom, Black families searched for relatives sold away in the slave trade, and Americans debated the future of a fractured nation.

 

Addressing the difficult topics of lynching and police violence, the book features well-known figures such as Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells, while also drawing attention to Black women and men whom we should know much better. Among them are Jennie Dean, founder of a school for Black teens in Manassas, Virginia; William Calvin Chase, longtime editor of the Washington Bee newspaper, and Emma V. Brown, the book’s narrator and the first Black teacher in the Washington public schools.

 

Dr. Masur is Board of Visitors Professor of History at Northwestern University and author, most recently, of Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction, which was a Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History.

 

This free presentation will take place in the Ford Education Room at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor. No tickets required.
A book signing will follow the the presentation.